Red Can Origami

by Madelaine Dickie

  —You feel shame? Taking another man’s country? Now my mother’s got no country! Her country bin get ripped open! Somebody bin sellim for nothing! I don’t wantim to happen here.

  The microphone falls squealing to her side. A man takes it from her and pats her back in rhythm with her sobs. Mandy looks horrified. The man says,

  —Thank you, Norma, thank you for sharing that with us. Those are valid concerns.

  A lady, a relative perhaps, guides her back to a seat in the audience as the man, with a waistline like a wheelie bin, starts talking.

  —As you all know, my name’s Sedget Phillips and I’m the pastor at Cyclone Ministries. What I want to share is that we’ve been praying to get our native title, and by the grace of God, that day is today. Last Wednesday, many of our congregation were sick and the Lord showed his mercy. Little Martha came to church with a toothache. We prayed. She was instantly healed!

  —Amen! cry a handful of hopefuls.

  Encouraged, Sedget’s voice grows louder.

  —Kensington came to church with stomach pains. We prayed. He was instantly healed! Praise God!

  —Praise God! echo a dozen in the crowd.

  Now he’s warming, soaring.

  —Aidan suffered with a sore right ear. Healed instantly. Glory be to God!

  Noah steps forward.

  —Thank you, Uncle Sedget …

  —I’m not finished, young man!

  Chastened, Noah bows his head and steps back.

  —In two weeks, we are inviting all the visiting or homeless countrymen to come to the church for a feed. Jesus said unto his disciples, ‘I have meat to eat that ye know not of.’ I’m finished now.

  He hands the microphone to Noah. Noah takes it and looks around, as if seeing the crowd for the first time. For a long, loaded moment, he orders his thoughts.

  —It’s already been said this morning how significant this day is for Burrika people. But, despite the fact we’ve just been granted our native title, when it comes to big mining companies wanting to access our land, all native title means is that we get a seat at the table. There are people here today who would seek to take what we have.

  Noah’s words, tentative at first, are gathering power as they tumble.

  —They know who they are. What they may not know is that they have a unique opportunity to right the wrongs of the past.

  The Gerro Blue staff fidget their discomfort, except for Watanabe, who gives a simple solemn nod. Jeff elbows you.

  —I’ve got the photos and some grabs. I think we’re done here. I’ve been to more interesting sessions about the state budget.

  Noah shoots a look of disapproval in your direction.

  Jeff’s filthy fingers find the small of your back. In a gesture both inappropriate and aggressive, he shoves you toward the car.

  Over the microphone Noah’s voice falters, just for an instant.

  Boab Bluff is half an hour from the site of the determination and the closest town to Gubinge. On the drive you say,

  —So the mob now have the right to ‘enjoy’ their native title, can hunt and fish and whatever on their traditional lands. I get that. But they don’t have the right to veto development? Was that what Noah was saying? That they can’t say no to Gerro Blue?

  —Something like that.

  —And so what about the challenge, against Gerro’s proposed exploration?

  Jeff sighs, as if explaining is all very tiresome.

  —They won’t win. Native title groups never win. So Gerro will get their exploration licence. And then let’s say they hit the uranium jackpot. They’ll need a native title agreement with Burrika before the state government grants them their mining lease. If Burrika don’t choose to come to the table and negotiate, they’ll get nothing. Gerro, who’s at least had a crack at engaging the natives, can push ahead anyway. Got it? Good. I’m dying for a beer.

  Jeff beelines to the hotel’s bar for a schooner of bush chook and leaves you with instructions to meet and interview someone called ‘Ranger Greg’ at the boat ramp. Evidently, he’s got a titillating story about a rogue and violent croc.

  Boab Bluff, once booming, is now a backwater. You drive out to the port along empty streets that blur with midday’s mad mirage. Beyond the streets are mudflats, glittering with salt and glass. Apparently, on full moons the locals throw marsh parties, drum and bass competing with the invective of quad bikes and mosquitoes.

  At the jetty, the tide’s surging black with mud, visibly swallowing the industrial boat ramp an inch a second.

  An older man waits at a picnic table next to the ramp. That must be Greg.

  —You must be Ava. From down south, are you?

  —Nah. I’m over in Gubinge.

  His mouth sours, as if that’s worse.

  —Don’t get crocs like this in Gubinge.

  —What’s the story?

  A big male, patient and smart, has been getting cheeky. Putting its snout on the transom of people’s boats. Snapping up dogs that get too close to the water. Evading the trap. He disappeared for a while, but now he’s back, with a petite, vicious wife in tow.

  —Now, that’s okay, that’s all pretty normal, but the reason I gave Jeff a call was because a few nights ago, some local clowns gave the croc a feed! Tossed a bloody dead wallaby onto the boat ramp! I mean, you’ve got dad and the kids, going for a nice fish together on the weekend …

  You switch off. The real story today wasn’t some croc lurking at the boat ramp. You witnessed part of history, something truly significant, truly powerful, and yet Jeff, after turning up late, after taking the obligatory snaps, could think of nothing else except hitting the piss with one of the local corrupt councillors. You wish you’d taken a day’s annual leave, gone on your own or with Lucia. You wish you’d had a chance to talk to Noah.

  At the hotel’s bar, it takes Jeff a good three minutes before he introduces you to the councillor. The councillor’s Jeff’s age, with skin the greasy texture of cooked chook. Once introductions are over, Jeff puts his back on a forty-five-degree angle to you and picks up where he left off.

  Someone’s watching from the other side of the bar. He’s on the edge of a pool of light. It’s Watanabe, the Gerro Blue boss.

  The men’s conversation has now swung to Ling Lee, the chairwoman of a Chinese pastoral company that’s just purchased three major stations in the region.

  —She’s a cougar, that one.

  —Reckon she does Asian massage?

  —Mate, she’s the chairwoman of a global company! If you were lucky enough to get her in the sack, you’d be massaging her flaps!

  Jeff turns to you abruptly.

  —We’re going over to the restaurant for a feed. Are you coming?

  You’re too horrified to manage anything beyond a quick shake of the head. When they go, you glance around the rest of the bar. A couple of countrymen are playing pool, a couple of backpackers are bent over beers and phones, a couple of grey nomads are glaring into space. Watanabe’s close enough to have heard the whole conversation. Embarrassed, you slide off the bar stool, and go and introduce yourself to the devil.

  The barmaid’s floating close as a piranha, with her flaxen skin and small, sharp teeth. She’s compelled and repelled by the strangeness of Watanabe, eyeballing his perfectly cut suit, the cleft on his chin, the lean shadows sculpting his cheeks. You’re compelled and repelled too—but for a different reason. Watanabe’s face is familiar, somehow.

  The barmaid clears away his empty glass, asks,

  —Another drink?

  Watanabe turns to you, says,

  —May I select a bottle?

  The wines by the glass are dreadful, but of the bottles, a pinot gris and a riesling look okay. Watanabe chooses the riesling, takes a sip, nods his approval. You follow, taste lime and talc. Switching to Japanese, he says,

  —It doesn’t quite have the fire of sake, but I have to admit, wine is growing on me. So, you used to live in Tokyo. What did you think of the city?


  You’re caught off-guard. You haven’t heard spoken Japanese in … what? A year?

  —It’s, like, it’s an interesting city …

  Shit, come on, show him you’re not a lightweight. Find the words. You take a deep breath, let a map of Tokyo open in your mind, let the words run.

  —No, not interesting, that’s a major understatement. Tokyo’s an extraordinary city! There’s so much vision in the urban planning, it’s so liveable, and of course, the food …

  Your mouth waters just thinking about the breakfast bowls of miso.

  —Have you ever tried fugu? Watanabe asks.

  Expensive and poisonous, puffer fish have to be painstakingly prepared.

  —No, never. I’m not sure I’d be brave enough …

  —It’s delicious, addictive. But eating fugu’s a roulette game. Perhaps, one day, you will lose.

  Behind you, there’s the wet sound of beer spilling on parquetry. Watanabe tops up both wine glasses and swaps back to English.

  —Uranium mining, like eating fugu, can be dangerous, unless there’s the correct preparation. For me, there is no question that the uranium will be mined. The question is, how will it be mined? With what vision?

  Watanabe’s voice is smoothly hypnotic. He’s not slight, like some Japanese men, like one of your ex-boyfriends, an engineer from Osaka. He continues,

  —It is my vision to grow Gerro Blue into a company that can be a model of world’s best practice. I want to raise the bar when it comes to state and national regulations for environment and heritage. That man at the determination today presented a challenge. We must step up to this challenge.

  —Watanabe, can I ask why you offered me a job?

  It’s quite direct, quite Australian, and so you keep your eyes lowered, to soften the words.

  —On a practical level, I would like to work with someone fluent in both Japanese and Australian culture. On a more philosophical and personal level, I believe that you understand many sides of a story can exist at once. You understand paradox, that different ways of seeing or being can be simultaneously correct. This might be impertinent, but I have a feeling you would secretly like to give back more. You’re wasted working for …

  Watanabe makes a disdainful gesture to Jeff’s empty stool.

  —These are just thoughts. I apologise if I’ve misjudged. If you change your mind, here’s my card.

  He presents it with ceremony, holding both edges.

  —Call me directly, day or night. I’ll fly you to Perth or Tokyo, New York, wherever I am. I’ll see to the details of your contract personally. I think we’ll make a good team.

  You tap glasses.

  There’s voltage.

  And then you remember where you recognise him from.

  Emboldened, now, you take another sip of your wine and ask,

  —So why are you covering up your exploration on Burrika country?

  Ichika, one of your girlfriends, was working on the story. She was a young Japanese journalist who’d been educated in Brazil. At seventeen, she fell in love with a musician in São Paulo’s baile funk scene.

  —It’s a thing, she explained to you one night, when you were both full on chicken skin skewers and cheap Chilean wine. Our parents expect us to go feral, dye our hair blue, break the mould, and they’re cool with it. They know we’ll come back.

  She came back alright; came back to become one of the best and brightest arts reporters the paper had. Every second Saturday, you’d meet for a run at Inokashira Park, and after the run, you’d settle at a café overlooking a pond and swan-shaped paddleboats to talk about the stories that interested you, or challenged you.

  One Saturday, Ichika had a problem. There had been mutters of a move in Japan to criminalise the possession of child pornography. Ichika wondered whether sexually explicit manga would, or should, be defined as child pornography. The characters in the manga she referred to were often ten years old or younger: creatures in school uniforms with glassy purple eyes and pancake-flat chests. She was garnering views from men and women in different professions.

  There were those who said any materials of children under eighteen created to fulfil sexual desire should be considered pornographic. There were others who said that it was a ‘hobby’, that it was ‘harmless’, that the naysayers were mixing reality and fiction.

  And then there was Yuma Watanabe.

  He called her. Said he’d speak on the proviso that his name remained secret. He was the most compelling interviewee by far, citing at length a successful challenge to the 1996 US Child Pornography Prevention Act that had sought to include fictitious images in its scope, and then posing a series of questions at breakneck pace: Juliet’s a tender thirteen—should we ban productions of Shakespeare’s epic text? How about Lolita? Where does it stop? Not just in regards to the freedom of speech, but when it comes to the government’s control of one’s fantasies …

  —It sounds like a good interview.

  —It was, but Sora-san won’t let me run it anonymously, and all the other sources in the story are named. So I called Watanabe-san up yesterday evening, and he said, ‘Sure, you can put down my real name, I’m not afraid to stand by my words’.

  —So … what’s the problem?

  —He sounded drunk.

  —He’s given his okay. If I was you, I’d run with it.

  She ran with it. But the following day, all of Japan’s major newspapers had pounced, not on the potential changes to legislation involving child pornography, but on Watanabe, the maverick son of an influential Japanese business family, speaking out of turn with no regard to ‘shame’ …

  Maybe that’s why he’s been banished to north-west WA.

  A woman vaults over the front handlebars of her bicycle, loses hold of her bottle, and lands in a colourful flutter of glass. Her face is pitted with stubborn decades of drinking.

  —Are you okay?

  The pavement darkens with sourly stinking red wine.

  —Fine, she mumbles. I’m fine.

  —Can I give you a hand?

  You help her to her feet, and then right her bicycle. It’s painted black, like all poached bikes in Gubinge. The back tyre is flat and the handlebars are askew.

  —Where are you going? Would you like a lift?

  —Alright then, the footy field.

  You put down the back seats and wrestle the bicycle in. Cruising toward you on the bike track is the whitefella in the disability scooter who looks like he’s had a stroke. The woman sees him and says from the corner of her mouth,

  —Come on now, manga. Hurry up and get going.

  Once you’re both seated and buckled, you turn back toward town and ask if she knows the bloke.

  —Oh yeah. We all know that fella.

  —How’s that?

  —Gives the young ones beer for blowjobs. You don’t leave your kids around when he’s comin’ past.

  Your sympathy fast-freezes. If true, unlike the debate over whether or not sexually explicit comics should be banned in Japan, there’s no moral grey area on this one.

  —Jesus, that’s awful. So where’s your country? Are you a Burrika woman?

  She nods, face grooved with sadness and slow despair.

  —I’m a Burrika woman. Burrika woman for Burrika country.

  —I was with Burrika mob yesterday. Burrika just got native title. It means the country’s yours. You can fish, hunt, do whatever you want on country.

  Even as the words leave your lips, you’re wishing you could stuff them back in. The woman regards you with something like hatred.

  —Manga, she says. The country’s always been ours. No piece of paper’s gunna change that.

  You’re cutting across the edge of the desert toward Stockmen’s Rest en route to the rodeo—the town’s biggest event of the year. The highway is trimmed with mojito-green spinifex and umber earth. On one side of the road, you see sombre hills honeycombed with caves. On the other, red-rock ranges ricochet heat.

  —W
orst road to drive, especially on dusk, says Lucia.

  —Why’s that?

  —Because of the killer.

  Lucia points to a huddle of cattle up ahead. A young one shifts from foot to foot, considering a dart in front of the car. The others stop chewing and follow you with anxious, wet eyes. Lucia collapses her fingers one by one, talking you through all the recent killer-related accidents. Soon, she runs out of fingers.

  —Shouldn’t the stations fence off their property? you ask.

  —It’s not the law. Most of the accidents happen here, along the boundary of De Beer Downs. A few years ago, the White Namibian was given money from the state government to put up fencing.

  —So why didn’t he do it?

  —He chose to fix the fences along the border of Devil’s Gorge instead. That’s the station Noah manages. Said he didn’t want ‘the blacks’ stealing his stock.

  You’re looking forward to seeing Noah; you’re already picturing the post-rodeo beers at the Stockmen’s Rest Hotel. After a couple, Lucia will yawn and excuse herself, and a minute later, Noah will shadow you to your room.

  Around the bullring, the light falls through the gums in distinct shafts of dust. Women and children from surrounding Aboriginal communities cram the grandstand. Grey nomads sag ringside in camp chairs. There’s a cordoned-off bar area packed with kartiya men and women from the stations. The women’s ears are buttoned with pearls and they wear cowgirl boots and paisley shirts. When you thought of station women, you imagined freckled chicks running to fat. You didn’t imagine they’d be haughty and healthy and pretty.

  There’s no sign of Noah.

  The MC wheezes into the microphone,

  —We’ve got a reporter back here, Lucia from the Daily Gubinge. Now, don’t get too excited, she’s not making the latest blockbuster. But if you want to get your mug in the paper, go and say g’day.

  Noah could be back there, behind the chutes. Is he riding? You don’t remember if he said …

  The MC continues,

  —Before we go on, just a bit of housekeeping. See that car coming here now? The one with the flashing blue light on top? That’s the cheapest taxi in WA!